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Mother2

Over the past few years, video games are becoming greatly graphically enhanced. We can experience 3D worlds, awesome sound, and cinematic movies in the latest video games out there. But there is a downside to all these great graphical things. It seems that more and more games (particularly RPGs) are being, watched and not played. When I say "watched", I mean you're watching the screen like you would a movie. Some examples are Final Fantasy 6, Chrono Trigger, SMRPG, ect. And that's just for the SNES console. If you look at Playstation games, they have a lot of cinema scenes, and movie-like drama. Take Final Fantasy 7 for example. Sure, the graphics and movies were cool when you first saw them, but after a while, you just wish there was a fast-forward button.

SNES games do the same thing. Let's take Super Mario RPG for example. It probably has the best graphics of any SNES game. There was also a lot of "movie action". By this I mean that the characters did things on their own a lot, and you just merely watched them. Eventually, you just get sick of watching them again and again. But EarthBound is different. There's rarely any scenes where you just watch. The only main scenes I can think of, are the Runaway Five performances. Even the ending of the game isn't just "sitting back and watching". You get a chance to make your own ending, which I thought was really cool. You can go back to people you met, and see if they have anything new to say. Even after the credits, you STILL have a small task to complete (which is seeing what's going on downstairs...again).

I think this is just another thing that makes EarthBound unique, compared to other RPGs. You PLAY the game, more then you WATCH the game. Of course, this does have a downside, since there's no character interaction (which is one thing the game lacked, that we really wanted to see). But we can easily replace that with our stories, thoughts, and ideas. But because you don't just sit there and WATCH EarthBound, that gave it a lot more replay value. Which can be rare in some RPGS. Hopefully, EB 64 won't fall victim to just being one big movie. Maybe EB 64 will prove that you can have an RPG with great graphics, and great replay value.